The American Girl [Paperback]

Personally, I found "The American Girl," by Monika Fagerholm, to be an absolutely brilliant and mesmerizing work of contemporary literature. But be forewarned: this book is definitely not for everyone! With this review, I strive to reach out and communicate only with that small percentage of readers who would be sorely disappointed if they missed discovering this author and this work. At best, Fagerholm is capable of showing us a whole new way to use language in the service of literature. That is the strength of this book, and if that statement stirs your interest, then this book may be for you.

Although the true gift of this book is the author's inventive use of language, I must agree with a number of reviews here that this American translation is flawed. In particular, the lyrics to popular American songs from the 60s and 70s play an important role in the book, but the translator translated the Swedish lyrics into English rather than doing the research necessary to discover the original English versions. As a result, much of the musical magic of those lyrics used within the contex of the story is abrasively lost on the American ear. If I were Monika Fagerholm, I'd sue the translator over these significant errors! But despite this specific type of error, the originality of Monika Fagerholm's prose style does shine through in this translation -- one might only guess if this work would have been even better with another translator.

So what is this book about? Actually, it is best if you know very little about the plot. It might be easy to spoil the story with too much information...so beware of reviews that reveal too much about the storyline. All that I will say is that this is a dark, moody, twisted tale with potent mythical overtones. The reader is always kept off-balance and reality is a constant shifting, morphing, changing uncertainty. This book is about fantasy and game-playing, betrayal and loneliness, abuse and dysfunctional parenting, delusion and reality. It is a rich, subtle, nuanced gothic mystery. The prose has a unique architecture that compliments the mood and texture of the plot. One foreign reviewer has called this work a mixture of David Lynch and Joyce Carol Oates...and I believe that is a very apt description. I'd also add that although there is absolutely no comparison between the writing styles of these authors, I found the same type of breathtaking ORIGINALITY in the prose of "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy and "The Bone People" by Keri Hulme. Both authors were awarded the prestigious Booker Prizes for those works. This work by Monika Fagerholm has won a series of prestigious Swedish literary prizes and is getting rave professional reviews in its many translations throughout Europe.

As I read this work, it literally pulled me inside, time disappeared, and the real world faded -- I found myself transported to another linguistic reality. When I got to the end, I was wholly satisfied because the mysteries had been resolved, but what pleased me the most, were the words: "to be continued." It is obvious that the stories resolved in the first book are complete and will not be revisited in the second volume, but the dark, moody, twisted tales with potent mythical overtones will go on in another time period with other characters and perhaps some of the characters from the first book changed by time. When I completed the book, I felt just like I did twenty years ago at the end of one of David Lynch's "Twin Peaks" television episodes: I could hardly wait for the next one!

If what I've said in this review appeals to you, then please give this book a chance and you may be pleasantly rewarded. If it doesn't, then this book is definitely not for you. Personally, I can hardly wait for the second volume, "The Glitter Scene," to be available in English.

Before writing this review, I did something I've never done before. I read other reviews of the book. Not because I wanted to get an idea of what to say in my review...but because this book left me so confused that I was hoping for some insight as to what happened. Even who I had been reading about, for that matter.

I'm not a reader who requires closure, or an ending all tied up with a pretty bow. Give me an unreliable narrator and I'm good. Most of the time. I love guessing, and not knowing EXACTLY what happened. But I have to have some idea that SOMETHING happened.

The other reviews that I read didn't give me any big clues, but they did confirm something I suspected...that something was lost in the translation. Some of the confusion in the narrative and certainly some of the repetitive phrases ("so to speak") must come from the translation that was done.

That said, "The American Girl" is not for the faint of heart. The character names, actions, realities are more than a bit ambiguous. Much of the work is left for the reader to do as s/he experiences life in "The District". The author has a neat trick of turning the lens as well as turning the hands of the clock either backwards or forwards so that without breaking stride, the reader learns what another character felt or did in conjunction with an event. Which can be illuminating...or confusing.

I think this is a story about human emotion, at its core. There is a mystery surrounding the American girl that came to The District years ago...but that may be just the center point around which all the other characters lives pivot. It's about the feelings involved in trying to find one's way in the world, especially when one is emotionally damaged.
In growing up, in discovering sexuality and maintaining relationships with others.

"Because what did this mean now? Was this the step into adulthood? The moment when everything changed at once and became something else? The moment when the story about Doris and Sandra took another road? But in that case, then which one? Was it the road toward the definite and limited, which also had a name? That which was not so open to all possibilities like the winding road they were now on?"

There are some amazing insights into this book, complex thoughts summed up in such a simple way that they strike right to the heart of the matter. One is repeated throughout the book and stayed with me after finishing it:

"Belonged to the kind of hard things in the soul from which stories cannot be woven."

I just wish I understood more about what happened in "The American Girl". I know there are so many things I missed...and not for lack of description or detail. I can't believe it's all a function of the translation. And I know part of it must be me...but...

I don't know what was truth in this book. I do think the author got so far into the characters minds to make us understand that there is no one truth, and that even to a person who experienced an event, there is no one version as to what happened. Too much is colored by what happened before...and as time passes, gets colored even further by what happens later. Too much is interpreted in different ways by who we are. And that, I suppose, is the message in this book.

"But there are also storytellers, a special kind of mythomaniac who can serve versions of, above all, their own life stories, stories completely unlike each other, all just as false. And yet not lie."

Brief summary and review, no spoilers.

This is a difficult book to summarize, and in many ways an even harder one to read. Monika Fagerholm is a Finnish author writing in Swedish, and the book definitely had the disorienting feel of a translation. This was not a smooth, consistent reading experience for me.

The book starts out in 1969 in Coney Island where we are introduced to a young girl named Eddie de Wire. She goes to visit some relative somewhere on the coast near Helsinki. We know that Eddie has disappeared from there, and presumed drowned. Her death has become a mystery and almost mythologized by those who live nearby.

Other key characters are a young abused child named Doris, who commits suicide at age 16. (We know this almost from the outset, so no spoiler.) We also meet a young, lonely girl named Sandra, who's been primarily raised by her father, after her mother goes missing. Sandra and Doris become best friends and soul mates, and their relationship was one of the high points of the book for me.

There are plenty of other characters, including a young man named Bjorn who may have been involved with Eddie, who we also know very early on has killed himself after finding out Eddie died. His body is discovered by his troubled younger brother Bencku, who has made maps of the region's houses and yards. (Again, no spoiler, we are told this at the start.)

This is a long book - over 500 pages. It starts out by telling us about all these teenage deaths and by going back and forth through time. It's a bit confusing and have to say that there were times when I was a bit discombobulated and when I felt like I wanted to throw in the towel and stop reading. The fact that this is a translation and has an almost choppy feel to it only added to this being a slow-go for me.

Yet, if you are feeling a bit overwhelmed by all subplots and characters and all the jumps through time and story, hang in there. It really does come together in the end and all is explained. There are some good twists for those who like that sort of thing (and I do), and the book has a sort of epic feel to it - an almost dreamlike quality that makes it memorable and haunting. Just wish it hadn't felt like such work getting there.